THE POETRY OF PAUL ELUARD
33
meaning and emotion than it can bear, may be observed in the
imitators of Hopkins. The tricks are managed, but the true effects
not in any way approached.
Emotion, when it rises above pathos, immediately takes on
complexity. Eluard, well below the complex level, and attempting
to work with the automatic and hallucinatory, at the end is left
with his vocabulary (simple, exquisitely chosen), his syntax (also
of the simplest), and his one emotional effect: "an amorous and
dolorous obsession of an infinitely pathetic character."
Eluard is incapable of the poem of revolt. When he feels that
such a poem is required of him, he writes the following undis–
tinguished and adolescent lines:
CRITIQUE DE LA POESIE
C'est entendu je hais le regne des bourgeois
Le
regne des flies et des pretres
Mais je hais plus encore l'homme qui ne hait pas
Comme moi
De toutes ses forces
Je crache ala face de l'homme plus petit que nature
Qui a tous mes poemes ne prefere pas cette CRITIQUE DE LA POESIE
(La Vie Immediate,
1932)
The kindest of Eluard's critics have warned him against the
traditional French affectation into which his writing can so easily
he led. He shows this tendency in his comparisons, which are likely
to compare something of emotional weight to something pretty or
abstract, or charmingly strange. Or delicate attributes are given to
creatures and objects of a certain natural energy and strength:
Birds perfume the woods
Rocks their great nocturnal lakes
And it is possible, in Eluard, as in any poet, to detect the faked
phrase, put in to make things harder, or to render matters, to the
casual glance at least, more profound. All the manifestoes in the
world cannot infuse import into "agile incest," or "fishes of
anguish." This sort of thing, if persisted in, becomes
mignardise
and confiserie.
Eluard's virtues are apparent, and his influence, if not strong,
might he importantly pervasive. His basic naturalness, existing
uniquely among his contemporaries, preserves in French literature
(at a time when such a delicate ingredient might he entirely lost)
